Dijan loved the smell of blood.

  It compared only to the smell of frying peppers, or of rain after drought. Blood was the scent of life, the scent of strength, the scent of death; and it filled his nostrils, then his chest, till he swelled so big that he felt bigger than all of those things. Bigger than the world too.

  Careful. Or a devi will deign to play a trick on you.

  That was his mother's croaking, reproachful voice in his ear, and he ignored it easily because she was dead and gone, whilst he was here, here, here, alive and stinking of iron on iron and pure, pulsing horror.

  He never felt as here as he did when he suffered through the terror of ankam. There was something sacred in the fear, he thought. Like the smell of blood, it made him whole and big, despite the smallness of the apparent cause, which was to do with a trinket, or a woman, as it often was. Both warriors were sworn to battle on behalf of their lords, had trained years for the day and would fight to the death; but Dijan mostly didn't care about the honor of his lord. He cared about the honor of his guru in the art, and about kalaripayattu.

  He looked into the dark-bright eyes of his opponent, name of Madapalli Arjun Pillai, practitioner of hanuman-vazhi, and saw in them that they were fighting to that same end.

  His urumi had drawn a severe tear in his opponent's torso, the act of calling it back had left him painted in the man's blood. Still, he remained standing. Dijan respected him greatly for it. He reverently placed his urumi and shield down at the edge of the platform where it might not get trampled, and assumed varaha vadivu. His opponent placed down his own urumi and shield, assumed maarjaara vadivu.

  Through bloodied and broken teeth the two smiled at each other, hesitantly at first, then gaily, and perhaps a little childishly, though to the earthly audience it likely appeared to be little more than a violent baring of reddened maws before they leapt at each other in bare-handed combat.

  I love you, a masculine feminine voice said to the self that had temporarily been called Dijan. The voice could have belonged to the guru, or the mother, or maybe something else. Probably something else.

  But I don't love only you. I interfere for sake of that bechari too. Still, consider this a reward for a life of devotion, courage and simpleness.

  The self that had temporarily been called Dijan suddenly understood that it was about to experience a change.

  You fought bravely. You might have won, had the monkey not bestowed his favour. Do not doubt your strength. Keep fighting as you are.

  The self that had temporarily been called Dijan listened silently because it had no mouth, and as it felt itself being compelled to scatter, it was still a bit scared, but somewhat less so than earlier.

  The masculine feminine voice seemed to be gathering by his ear-- which was odd because the self had no ears to speak of, so it made no sense that he imagined he could feel the brush of cool breath on his skin.

  Be not afraid, Dijan. Not too afraid at the very least. And keep fighting. Its fun to watch. I love you. I love you. I love you I love you I love you.

  Dijan opened his eyes to a very odd sort of light. He closed them again immediately.

  There lingered the ghost of a voice on the thin flesh of his ear-- he could almost feel it still, and he shivered from head to toe like his body was asserting itself to him. He was starting to forget, and he was starting to forget what it was that he was forgetting.

  The last things he recalled clearly included the wobbling visage of his opponent, and a terrible, coring pain. Words being mouthed to him that he couldn't quite make out except for the feeling that they imparted-- pride, or bigness, or wholeness, or something like that. An attempt to smile, and then nothing, and then something else. Something else entirely.

  Dijan's eyes screwed tighter as he tried to grasp onto the threads that were slipping away faster the harder he tried. He was left only with more feeling; something warm and fortifying, which could only be compared to his mother's embrace, or the gaze of his guru.

  Ah, well.

  He opened his eyes and confronted that strange light once again. It was harsher and colder than anything he usually recognised as light, but it illuminated a room, revealing so much white. White curtains, white linens, white ceiling. He was having trouble placing where he could possibly be, or even the kind of room this was.

  A normal household could not be this cold in atmosphere. A rich household could not be this bare. He considered the possibility that he had been sequestered away in some eccentric ashram in the distant hinterlands in order to heal from his injuries after winning the ankam, but he didn't remember winning the ankam. Dijan was actually fairly certain that he had lost.

  It was after a few beats that he finally considered that he was currently dead. Where had Yama deigned to send him before rebirth-- heaven or hell?

  He attempted to turn his head on the pillow to examine his surroundings further. A strange man in strange clothing slept on a chair, a repeating trill sounded from a box by his head. Strange, it was all so strange. Dijan had rather imagined that when he found himself in an afterlife, it'd be much easier to tell which it was. So he lived, then. Somehow.

  Dijan, who had been described as chronically un-curious to the point of dullness by many of his elders for most of his life, decided to simply accept his circumstances.

  Next, he took real stock of his body by closing his eyes and breathing, slowly and deeply, feeling his chest expand, and contract, and expand again. The pain in his belly was gone. His eyes still closed, he moved his stiff right hand to pat himself, and the search for scarring or bruising ended unsettlingly inconclusive. Running his tongue over his teeth revealed to him a mouth whole and unbroken. Even the tooth he lost as a boy when fist-fighting his sister had somehow regenerated.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  He did think about getting scared at that point but then he decided roundly against it, continuing to breathe instead.

  The trilling hadn't ceased since the moment he'd woken, but now he finally had the werewithal to register the apneic snoring from the man in the chair, the sound of movement and talk from the other side of the curtain. He couldn't understand most of the murmurs, and attempting to do so only resulted in a mighty headache, so he stopped trying and called for attention.

  "???-. Sahaa-."

  The hand that had been on his belly suddenly flew up to his neck, and he coughed confusedly.

  "?????. ???," he said now in a lower register, feeling his throat flex around the words. He still didn't sound as he should, and trying to felt very... forced.

  "???, hej," he tried. "Hej?"

  He didn't know what that last word meant or why he said it, except he did know what it meant, it meant, "Hey. Hej? Hey. What the kurwa. Kurwa. The fuck."

  The snoring stopped abruptly.

  "Minka! You've woken."

  Suddenly a fat, pale face entered into his line of sight, blocking that bright pale light and moving in quick and close before he could make sense of the features. Big lips pressed to his cheekbone and Dijan frowned till the face finally moved back to where it had been before.

  "Tell me how you feel, before I call the nurse."

  "Strange," Dijan said, looking back around with his hand still on his throat. His voice was high and thin. He had no idea which language he spoke.

  "It's understandable, after the knock you got. But you are okay. The nurse will tell you you are okay, or you will tell her. And we will leave here. You feel okay, no?"

  "Who are you?" Dijan asked, half-wishing he would stop talking. The man's voice had an irksome quality to it, gravelly and obscure. Men should speak clearly and with conviction.

  The man was quiet for a moment, then when he responded, it was almost quieter still.

  "Minka, look at me."

  The word minka was clearly being used to refer to him, so he turned his head to look at the unpleasant face. It bought to mind a freshly skinned hare. Very pink. Hard to look at.

  "Brother. I am your brother. Remember it."

  Dijan frowned again, his eyes wandering until he spotted a hovering mosquito, a stark dark mark against the curtain. Finally, a familiar sight.

  "I never had a brother," he said.

  He was the only son, spoiled and loved like one too. On the other hand, he had plenty of sisters, with just one being his senior. Dijan wished she were here to accompany him. Even before he found himself in this strange place, he'd been sorely missing her harsh, berating, loving presence.

  Large and clammy fingers suddenly gripped his chin and he was forced to look at the face again, jolting him from the nostalgia that bordered on melancholy. "Are you okay," the face demanded, "Or are you not okay?'

  "...Eh," Dijon replied quite honestly through the smush of his cheeks. The laugh he got in response was far more irritating than the buzz of the mosquito.

  "You can't even understand common Polish? Can't even speak it? Maybe you really aren't okay. A few braincells got knocked loose, huh? Minka."

  The word was said with an edge of affection that time, and was it that his face had not been held in such an imobilising grip, Dijan might have sneered.

  "Don't worry. I'll tell him to lay off you once we get back. I'm on your side, you know this. But remember that I'm your brother, and don't force yourself to speak when it's not necessary. You'll only look uneducated. You understand this, at least?"

  Dijan really didn't, but the man seemed to take his processing silence as agreement because he saw fit to let his face go, and then haul himself up out of the chair.

  The man's back dissapearing behind the curtain was his cue to attempt to sit up, but he was soundly fell by the most violent dizzy spell he'd experienced since that time he'd had to observe a fast immediately after a sleepless three day wedding celebration. He fell back onto the papery pillow with a grunt, gathered himself, then attempted to roll onto his side; but this time a sharp pain in his left arm froze him in the midst of movement, and he had to roll gently onto his back again. He focused on his breath again. Controlled it, held it. Let it go.

  Then he looked down to see a needle in his arm, attached to long rubber tubing, which was attached a clear pouch filled with a clear liquid. The needle was near kurpara marma though he doubted the purpose was therapeutic. The doubt was because it was 'near' not 'exactly', on top of the fact that the practice was very ancient and somewhat rare, on top of the fact that he couldn't imagine what the tubing and liquid had to do with suchi veda. Gently prodding the insertion point only resulted in a grunt. He'd see what the practioner who had inserted the needle had to say before he attempted something like removing it.

  The arm itself looked thin and sickly pale. Like a worm.

  It explained his current frailty if he had been confined to this bed for so long that... that he'd lost mass, and... Well. Dijan grasped feebly about for some sort of explanation that didn't provoke him to step closer to that abyss of paralysing fear so present in the room, and when he came up empty, he thought it more productive to stop thinking about it.

  Slowly, very slowly, he attempted to sit up again. He made good progress, making it up onto his elbows and feeling only slightly like he'd slammed in the head with a clay pot, before his concentration was broken by the sudden entrance of the man and a woman. He fell back again, his face damp and panting heavily.

  "Woah there, sweetheart! Were you trying to get up? That's a pretty good sign, even if it does look like it was a bit of an effort. How are we feeling?"

  The woman was tall and darker skinned, fussing over him as the man sat back down by his head, his small, thin eyes watching intently as the woman interfered with the noisy box.

  "She asked how you were feeling."

  "...Strange," Dijan said again, his tongue thick and heavy with the way he said it. The woman looked down at him, and grinned. She had very dark eyes, but the way she smiled gave them a bright glint. He decided that he liked this one a lot more than that one.

  "Haha. I did suspect that you knew more English than you were letting on, my lovely."

  'English'. 'Polish'. Dijan surmised that those were two different languages, and it explained why one seemed much more flexible and accommodating in his mouth than the other, though he was still having trouble distinguishing the sounds except by which ones he understood more instinctively, and which ones he didn't. He had to expend a lot of energy just attempting to decipher the words the woman had just uttered, though it wasn't impossible. All that wasn't to mention that he couldn't even begin to fathom why he suddenly knew an extra two languages on top of the one and a half he already had.

  Ach, he was tired. The lights were too white.

  The woman crouched by the head of the bed, looking at him gently as she spoke in a soft, feminine tone. Why couldn't it have been this woman to kiss him rather than that ugly ogre on his other side. Cruel world.

  "I'm going to ask you a few questions now. It'd be a great help if you could answer them before we let you get back to sleep. Think you're up for it?"

  That grating sound piped up before Dijan could finish parsing her meaning. "Sh-she no speak- she don't speak English very well. Understand, okay. Little bit. But speak, no."

  "...Is that true?" The woman asked. Though she kept a neutral expression, Dijon got the feeling that she didn't like the man either, which endeared her to him that slightest bit more. He thought about his answer.

  "Not sure," he said slowly, the two words stubborn and unco-operative. He really wasn't sure about anything and the feeling was getting to be frustrating. But he breathed slowly. Controlled it. Held it. Let it go.

  "You see? She don't speak. I translate, simple."

  The woman stood.

  "I do appreciate the offer, Mr. Pych, but it's hospital policy to use one of the translators we keep on hand for these very situations--"

  "Policy? Policy? Since when, this policy? Must be new policy?"

  "Uh... no, its not new. Are you... often here in a translating capacity for people?"

  "Often? What. Not often. No. I mean, no. This is strange. She will only be comfortable with me. She is very frightful, you know. Very strange policy."

  "And I do understand your concerns, Mr. Pych, but I assure you that these are very well trained professionals-"

  "Assure what. Assure who. I'm saying, is very strange."

  A pause. "...Cor. Look at her. She's clearly dozing off. Let's continue this discussion outside, yeah? Okay?"

  "Is okay with me. Fine. Let's continue."

  A warm, slender hand grasped his shoulder, prompting him to open his eyes. Waiting patiently for his hums of affirmation every so often, she explained slowly and clearly that he should push the 'button' if he needed help, that a meal would be served when he woke up, that he shouldn't attempt any drastic movement without somebody there.

  It was as she turned to go that he suddenly barked in his new, strange voice, "Wait! Light. Light. Off it."

  Then, belatedly, "Please."

  She smiled, and pressed something with her finger that suddenly muted the brutality of the light by a factor of ten, and he was left alone again.

  Dijan closed his eyes in blessed relief.

  In and up. He breathed intentionally for a while, noticing how the wind moved in his body. In and up, the path of prana. Life energy. An odd life, but he was living all the same. He was not dead or gone. He was here, here, here.

  Dijan's breathing deepened as his body relaxed into the crinkly bedding.

  First, sleep. He could figure out all this 'she' stuff later.